Start up aims to become first UK company to upscale lab grown pork
An Oxford University spin-out has revealed plans to become the first British commercial producer of sustainable, cultured meat in the UK.
With the just-announced Animal Welfare Bill focusing on improving livestock animals’ lives in the UK and abroad, the company, Ivy Farm Technologies has ambitions to put Britain on the map in the emerging global industry by producing products made from meat that has been made without GM additives, antibiotics or the need to slaughter animals for supermarkets and the restaurant trade from 2023.
It has launched a £16 million fund-raising to build a pilot production facility in the first step towards producing 12,000 tonnes of cultured pork a year by 2025 – equivalent to removing 170,000 pigs from the food production chain.*
Co-founder, Dr Russ Tucker, whose grandparents were butchers, believes that cultured meat is not only better for the planet, but it’s better for consumers as their process doesn’t use GM techniques or antibiotics. Ivy Farm is confident it will co-exist with progressive, traditional farming methods, offering an opportunity to re-shape the traditional UK farming system, and ensure it is ready to deal with 21st century pressures.
Ivy Farm is responding to a shift in consumer attitudes. Recent research from Ivy Farm found two thirds of people said they’d be happy to try cultured meat – and more than half said they’d be willing to buy it, demonstrating a huge potential market in the UK.
What Ivy Farm claims sets it apart from the small number of pioneers in this space is its ability to scale up the process. It says the ‘scaffold’ system it has developed to grow cells is more efficient, faster and considerably cheaper than any other technology available.
Ivy Farm said it can confidently claim it will be the first company in the UK to produce cultured meat (also known as lab-grown meat) to market at scale, making it available – and affordable – for consumers via restaurants and supermarkets.
Ivy Farm is already in talks with the FSA and the Government to explore ways it can support the UK’s nascent cultured meat sector.
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